Instructional Identities and Information Literacy: Transforming Our Programs, Institutions, and Profession, Volume 2, Amanda Nichols Hess (ed.), ACRL, 2023. 200p. Softcover. $65.00. 9780838939468 (Review 2 of a 3-volume title)

Transforming Our Programs, Institutions, and Profession is the second in a three-volume work edited by Amanda Nichols Hess, the Coordinator of Instruction & Research Help at Oakland University Libraries in Rochester, Michigan. This second volume of Instructional Identities and Information Literacy focuses on higher-level change, moving on from Volume 1, which addressed individual instructional identity. The transformations discussed in this volume include departmental changes, institutional changes, and changes to academic librarianship as a discipline.

This edited work is composed of chapters written by a variety of instruction and academic librarians in the field. Like the first volume, Volume 2 is divided into three separate sections—Part I: “Program-Level Transformation,” Part II: “Institution-Level Transformation,” and Part III: “Profession-Level Transformation,” —each one describing the experiences of librarians in applying transformative learning theory to their own programs, institutions, and library practice. Transforming Our Programs, Institutions, and Profession continues the series’ overarching theme applying Mezirow’s transformative learning theory to the library, programs, and the profession. Adjusting Mezirow’s initial philosophy, the editors use a “broader and more all-encompassing view of transformative learning to think about how our mindsets, attitudes, and behaviors might change around our work as information literacy instructors” (p. viii).

Librarians and contributors describe their own experiences while also incorporating other pedagogies, theories, and tools including constructivism, learner-centered design, critical and feminist pedagogy, collaborative design, social emancipatory transformative learning, and curriculum mapping. The wide variety of tools and theories used in combination with transformative learning theory emphasizes how these methodologies can be applied to a variety of situations and experiences in developing instructional identities.

Part I, “Program-Level Transformation” contains five chapters examining transformations in library science programs, expanding student outreach, and generating support for new instruction methods. Contributors encourage instructors to look for learning opportunities inside and outside the classroom, to form partnerships with other academic departments, and to self-reflect on what did and didn’t work. These shared practices can be adapted and applied by different instructional departments or academic libraries that are looking to make improvements or implement policies to support information literacy.

Part II, “Institution-Level Transformation,” is comprised of five chapters outlining changes at the institution level. These chapters explain the experiences of a small reference and instruction department in influencing departmental change, the use of professional development to increase faculty information literacy, integration of information literacy into the general education curriculum, developing a shared instructional identity, and the creation of a scaffolded instructional program in the university. Working with colleagues who also are developing their own transformations, educators may find encouragement and support. These experiences could be considered as next steps from Part I because authors also address making changes to their institution which can involve politics and the need for advocacy of information literacy as part of the process.

Part III, “Profession-Level Transformation,” is the shortest section with three chapters that focus on changes to the profession, including the framework’s applicability to community college libraries, diverse communities, and reluctant professionals. Are junior colleges different from universities? Are different instructional identities required considering the biases and -isms that students may encounter? Should instructors bring their own personal experiences to the classroom? These three chapters are particularly impactful to all of those in the academic library world as they discuss issues that apply to a variety of environments, populations, learning formats.

Like the first volume in this series Instructional Identities and Information Literacy, Volume 2 is a wonderful tool for any instruction librarian working in an academic setting. Contributors’ experiences present diverse perspectives on transformative learning theory, applicable to not only libraries, but other academic units. Mezirow’s transformative learning theory in conjunction with ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education provides a toolbox for educators use in developing their own instructional identities. This volume would be at home on the shelf of any academic instructional librarian, especially those who are looking to make a change or reflect on their own department or institutions’ instructional identity, as well as in the library collection of any university with a library and information science program.— Stephanie Cicero, Interim Library Director/Research and Instruction Librarian, Roberts Wesleyan University